Journal Archive

November 22-25, 2009:

In these four days, I finished my go-round on the entire BUG manuscript (the golem book) including filing things down, adding a new song, a glossary of Yiddish and Hebrew terms.

I wrote four poems for the “30 days 30 poems” challenge.

Answered lots of email. Lots of catching up on back stuff.

Saw a movie with Bob Marstall, my movie buddy–“Men Who Stared Down Goats” which was both amusing and serious. An anti-war movie artfully disguised as bizarre comedy. Reminded me of a movie I saw years ago, “King of Hearts” set in Europe during World War I where the inhabitants of an insane asylum make more sense than the soldiers fighting the war.

I went with friend and neighbor Jan to see another neighbor’s art show down in Chicopee driving through a downpour.

Got my new tv room chair which I love and is better for my back. And a new sofa-side table for one that was falling to pieces.

Physical therapy Wednesday morning and dinner at Heidi’s that night.

I got two rejections and one of the poems I wrote was about that:

Rejection Letters

You would think I’d be used to them,

those dead-eyed vultures of the writer’s world

who eat your soul as if it were

a piece of road-kill on the Interstate.

Today two winged into my in-box

and sat upon my still-breathing chest,

shroud eyes measuring me for dinner.

It doesn’t get easier, reading the un-reasons:

not for our list, in these difficult times,

too sad, too old, too quiet, too literary.

No is no, and there goes my heart, my liver

into the beak and belly of the vulture,

who did not even acknowledge my lineage

or ask me how to pronounce my name.

Though actually I was pretty sanguine about these two rejections, hardly even shrugging. They were not unexpected. After all, it’s a hard book to sell.